With wry, almost gallows humor, visual panache and an impressive voice cast, co-writer/director Chris (How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch) Sanders’s The Wild Robot nails the aching beauty of parenthood like few other films have.
Adapted from Peter Brown’s gorgeously illustrated middle grades novel, the film drops us and ROZZUM unit 7134 on an island uninhabited by humans. This makes it tough for “Roz” (Lupita Nyong’o) to fulfill her mission of completing a task, any task. But then an undersized gosling (Kit Connor) imprints on her, allowing Sanders to have some fun with the unending complications associated with Roz’s new task: parenting.
The writing and the delicately lovely animation work together to hypnotic effect, each unveiling something more human with every scene, regardless of the fact that there’s nary a human in the movie. Sanders’s script reflects the human experience, both the timeless (the thankless heartbreak of investing your whole heart and soul into the process of successfully losing your child to their own future) and the immediate (AI, corporate greed, tech overlords).
A talented cast deepens the film’s effect. Nyong’o effortlessly treads the line between logic and longing with so graceful a character arc that you can feel Roz blossoming. Pedro Pascal joins her as Fink, the fox who hates to admit that he wants to be part of this little family unit more than anything.
Catherine O’Hara—always a treasure—delivers dry wisdom in hilarious doses. Meanwhile, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Bill Nighy bring endearing personalities to their furry and feathered characters, while Stephanie Hsu injects Act 3 with a little wicked humor.
The film’s delight is only deepened by its sadness, and you may find yourself bawling repeatedly during this film. I know I did.
Sanders’s career is marked with the vulnerable optimism that defines an outsider’s longing for connection. In his worlds, a parent and their sort-of child—Lilo and Stitch, Hiccup and Toothless, Roz and Brightbill—flail and flounder until they find the strength of an extended family.
It’s a story he’s apparently not done telling. But he tells it so very well.
Last year, Brian Duffield’s No One Will Save You told a fully developed alien invasion story with a single line of dialogue. In 2013, J.C. Chandor created a breathless, satisfying adventure yarn without one word with All Is Lost.
A little more than midway through the post-apocalyptic horror Azrael, director E. L. Katz (working from a script by Simon Barrett) introduces the first speaking character. It’s a cagey move, and one that solidifies the filmmakers’ ability to clarify not just an immediate situation but an entire mythology without a single comprehensible syllable spoken.
Our signposts are three separate cryptic prophesies scrawled across the screen. Other than that, we witness a world left behind. Our tale is set many years after the Rapture. Alone in a woods, one woman (Samara Weaving, Ready or Not) finds beauty in nature. As she brings a gift to her lover (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Femme), they recognize a bird call and flee.
Because that was definitely not a bird.
Anyone who’s followed Weaving’s career knows she’s up for some relentless, bloody action. She has her fill of it here, battling a left-behind cult as well as bloody thirsty, flesh bound demons. She’s so expressive that the character never feels limited without lines.
The balance of the ensemble is also up to the task at hand—Katariina Unt and Eero Milonoff (of the amazing Border) leave a particular impression.
So do the demons, which come across like char broiled crawlers from The Descent. Nice!
Katz hit out-the-gate with his feature debut, Cheap Thrills. Barrett has been hit or miss, but his hits have soared, You’re Next and The Guest among them. What they fully understand is how to develop tension, how to direct your attention, and how to use the camera to tell attentive audiences all they need to know.
There’s nuance and depth for those who invest, but at 85 minutes and boasting almost constant action and bloodshed, Azrael is a solid choice for even those with a limited attention span.
Harper Steele loved traveling America and spent years upon years hitchhiking and driving from town to town, dive bar to dive bar, stock car race to pool hall to backwater, savoring every minute of it. But since she transitioned a couple of years ago, she’s afraid to do it anymore. She’s afraid to travel these roads in the same way any woman would be, and she’s afraid to travel them in the way that only a trans woman would be.
Her friend thinks maybe she can reexplore the country she loves as her true self if she has a man with her. Preferably a big, lumbering, lovable, friendly, famous friend willing to shift attention away from her whenever she might want him to. All she has to do is agree to go to stop at least once so Will Ferrell can get a traditional glazed at Dunkin Donuts.
There are so many reasons to watch Will & Harper, not the least of which is to see two of the smartest comedic minds (the two met on SNL when Steele was head writer for the show) riff.
And it’s not just the two of them. Their trip leads to run ins with some great SNL alum and a reminder that Kristin Wiig is insanely talented.
Another great reason to watch Will & Harper is that this film fits so beautifully into that American cinematic tradition of emotional, thrilling, deeply human road picture: one relationship changes and deepens with the landscape as America itself is more clearly revealed.
Because Steele’s America is not what anyone would consider a safe space for trans people—but where, really, is that space?
The friends begin in NYC with an SNL reunion and an awkward-at-best hug from Lorne Michaels. At a Pacers game, Indiana governor Eric Holcomb is eager to meet Ferrell, and it isn’t until a little googling after the photo op that he and Harper learn about the Republican politician’s aggressively anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ2+ policies. The scene leads to the first of many brazenly honest and emotional moments between the friends.
Ferrell’s tenderness and endearingly bumbling protectiveness is deeply lovely, even when—maybe especially when—it’s almost desperate. The deeper into red state territory the two travel, the more attention seeking Ferrell seems, almost certainly to try to create a protective shield around his friend. It doesn’t always work, and his own grief at his shortcomings as her friend are heartbreakingly lovely.
But it’s Steele whose openness and forthrightness breaks any but the coldest and most ignorant heart. And what she does—she and her buddy—that’s so important is to show how utterly and undeniably normal it all is: hating the way you look in a bathing suit, wanting and failing to love the sound of your own voice, wondering what it’s like to have boobs for the first time.
Will & Harper just makes you wonder how it can be possible for anyone to be upset by another person’s transition. It also makes you hope those who feel too stigmatized to do it realize that there is a better life.
“From the moment I transitioned, all I wanted to do was live.”
Kate Winslet can hold her breath for 7 minutes and 15 seconds. That’s just one of many astonishing things about the 7-time Oscar nominee (and one-time winner), and it speaks to something she appears to seek in characters: badassedness.
And with her latest character, there’s no denying those bona fides. Winslet plays WWII photojournalist and all-around badass Lee Miller in Ellen Kuras’s biopic, Lee.
The film opens and closes on an interview between an aged Miller and a young man (Josh O’Connor, Challengers). This allows Winslet to provide a bit of voiceover as the film meanders through just a slice of Miller’s remarkable life, beginning with the day she met her husband, Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård) at a garden party full of poets and painters in 1937—just two years shy of the beginning of WWII.
And though Miller’s life had already contained more than enough intrigue, adventure and invention for at least one film, there’s a reason Kuras (working from Liz Hannah, Marion Hume and John Collee’s adaption of Antony Penrose’s biography) began the story here. Miller’s work as a war correspondent and photographer is as breathtaking and heroic as anything you’re likely to see.
Kuras spent most of her career behind the camera in the role of cinematographer, collaborating with the likes of Michel Gondry, Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch. Appropriately, you see every ounce of that experience with her first feature length narrative as director, working with DP Pawel Edelman. Kuras’s admiration for Miller’s work clearly influences her own shot making, just as a respect for Miller’s unapologetic confidence colors her approach to the storytelling.
Winslet’s wonderful, obviously—full of bravado and rage, vulnerability and impatience. The ensemble around her, mostly in fairly small roles, impresses as well. Andrea Riseborough and Andy Samberg are particular standouts.
Where Lee falls short is in its too-traditional execution, which feels out of step with the way Kuras elsewhere embraces Miller’s renegade spirit. The cinematic interview bookends, exposition-heavy narration, glossy look and conventional score feel at odds with the protagonist’s character.
Lee Miller deserved a gustier film. Lee is not a bad movie. It’s a very competently made, beautifully shot picture boasting very solid performances. It’s worth seeing. It’s just not as memorable as it ought to be.
So says the hand-carved display in the small but cozy living room of Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) and Soo-jin’s (Jung Yu-mi) apartment. What the struggling actor and his rising executive/very pregnant wife don’t know yet is that they’re about to have a hell of a problem to tackle.
Writer/director Jason Yu’s Sleep is a smartly scripted, playfully wearying horror with tension rooted firmly in how very much you like Hyun-su and Soo-jin.
At some point in Soo-jin’s ninth month, Hyun-su begins to talk in his sleep.
“Something’s inside.”
And then he walks in his sleep. Eats. Claws at his face. This, obviously, becomes somewhat frightening, but the couple aims to tackle this thing together. Of course, soon enough there will be three of them.
Yu slowly cranks up tension as Soo-jin struggles between a maternal desire to protect her baby and a deep-rooted commitment to working through every marital problem with her husband.
One of the anxieties Yu toys with is that bone-deep exhaustion of a new parent, amplified for Soo-jin by her wakeful watch to make sure her husband doesn’t do harm to the baby in his sleep. You’re exhausted for her, and when she seems to start making rash, even insane decisions, well, who could blame her?
The way Yu manipulates tone is a thing of wonder. The more desperate and bleary eyed the film becomes, the funnier it is, and that dark humor is both at home and wildly startling. But there is a sweetness to it, and a camaraderie between Jung and Lee (who died tragically last year) that insists on your investment in the outcome of their story.
The third act is almost brazenly unhinged, and Sleep is all the better for it. It’s a tricky tale meticulously crafted, but it has a sweetness at its heart and that’s what makes it memorable.
What is it about a deep hole that is so profoundly terrifying? Is it the worry about what could be down there, waiting? Is it the claustrophobic terror of falling into the pit without hope of escape? Horror writers and filmmakers have exploited this particular primal dread for centuries. How many versions of The Pit and the Pendulum do we need to see to know Poe had struck a chord? There are two different (very worthy) films called The Hole, plus the lunatic horror The Pit, as well as John and the Hole, and of course, all the “buried alive” terror, like Ryan Reynolds’s Buried.
We want to peer way down in the hole to dig up our five favorite films from down in the pit.
5. The Hole in the Ground (2019)
Sara (Seána Kerslake), along with her bib overalls and young son Chris (James Quinn Markey), are finding it a little tough to settle into their new home in a very rural town. Chris misses his dad. Sara is having some life-at-the-crossroads anxiety.
Then a creepy neighbor, a massive sink hole (looks a bit like the sarlacc pit) and Ireland’s incredibly creepy folk music get inside her head and things really fall apart.
Writer/director Lee Cronin’s subtext never threatens his story, but instead informs the dread and guilt that pervade every scene. You look at your child one day and don’t recognize him or her. It’s a natural internal tension and a scab horror movies like to pick. Kids go through phases, your anxiety is reflected in their behavior, and suddenly you don’t really like what you see. You miss the cuter, littler version. Or in this case, you fear that inside your beautiful, sweet son lurks the same abusive monster as his father.
4. Jug Face (2013)
Writer/director Chad Crawford Kinkle brings together a fine cast including The Woman’s Sean Bridgers and Lauren Ashley Carter, as well as genre favorite Larry Fessenden and Sean Young to spin a backwoods yarn about incest, premonitions, kiln work, and a monster in a pit.
As a change of pace, Bridgers plays a wholly sympathetic character as Dawai, village simpleton and jug artist. On occasion, a spell comes over Dawai, and when he wakes, there’s a new jug on the kiln that bears the likeness of someone else in the village. That lucky soul must be fed to the monster in the pit so life can be as blessed and peaceful as before.
Kinkle mines for more than urban prejudice in his horror show about religious isolationists out in them woods. Young is particularly effective as an embittered wife, while Carter, playing a pregnant little sister trying to hide her bump, a jug, and an assortment of other secrets, steals the show.
3. I’m Not Scared (2003)
Director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo) crafts a perfect, gripping, breathless thriller with his Italian period piece. In a tiny Southern Italian town, kids run through lushly photographed fields on the hottest day of the year. They’re playing, and also establishing a hierarchy, and with their game Salvatores introduces a tension that will not let up until the last gasping breaths of his film.
Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) sees a boy down a deep hole on a neighboring farm. The boy, Filippo (Mattia Di Pierro), believes he is dead and Michele is an angel. But the truth is far more sinister. I’m Not Scared is a masterpiece of a thriller.
2. Onibaba (1964)
Lush and gorgeous, frenzied and primal, spooky and poetic, Kaneto Shindô’s folktale of medieval Japan scores on every level, and Hiraku Hayashi’s manic score keeps you dizzy and on edge.
An older woman (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) survive by murdering lost samurai and looting their goods.
Passions and jealousy, a deep pit and a dangerous mask, some of the most glorious cinematography you’ll see all combine with brooding performances to create a remarkable nightmare.
1. The Descent (2005)
A bunch of buddies get together for a spelunking adventure. One is still grieving a loss – actually, maybe more than one – but everybody’s ready for one of their outdoorsy group trip.
Writer/director Neil Marshall begins his film with an emotionally jolting shock, quickly followed by some awfully unsettling cave crawling and squeezing and generally hyperventilating, before turning dizzyingly panicky before snapping a bone right in two.
And then we find out there are monsters.
Long before the first drop of blood is drawn by the monsters – which are surprisingly well-conceived and tremendously creepy – the audience has already been wrung out emotionally.
The grislier the film gets, the more primal the tone becomes, eventually taking on a tenor as much like a war movie as a horror film. This is not surprising from the director that unleashed Dog Soldiers – a gory, fun werewolf adventure. But Marshall’s second attempt is far scarier. For full-on horror, this is one hell of a monster movie.
Speak No Evil is in a tough spot. Essentially, you’re either a moviegoer who will breathe easier this weekend knowing you’ll never again have to sit through the excruciating trailer, you’re a potentially interested horror fan, or you’re a horror fanatic wary that director James Watkins will pull punches landed by Christian Tafdrup’s almost unwatchably grim but genuinely terrifying 2022 original.
Well, Watkins does not pull those punches, but they do land differently.
Louise and Ben Dalton (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) are vacationing blandly in Italy with their 11-year-old, Agnes (Alix West Lefler) when a louder, more alive family catches Ben’s attention.
Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and their quiet lad Ant (Dan Hough) seem to be living life large, and Ben can’t help but envy that. So, after the Daltons are tucked blandly back into their London flat and he receives a postcard from their vacation pals inviting them out to the countryside, how can he say no?
We all know he should have said no, but that’s not how horror movies happen.
What follows is a horror of manners, and very few genres are more agonizing than that. Little by little by little, alone and very far from civilization, the Daltons’ polite respectability is jostled and clawed and eventually, of course, gutted.
Those familiar with Watkins’s work, especially his remarkable and remarkably unpleasant Eden Lake, needn’t worry that he’ll let you off the hook. This is not the sanitized English language version fans of the original feared.
Indeed, Watkins and a game cast highlighted by a feral McAvoy stick to Tafdrup’s script for better than half of the film. Watkins, who adapted the original script, complicates relationships and gives the visiting Dalton parents more backbone, but he doesn’t neuter the grim story being told. Instead, he ratches up tension, provides a more coherent backstory, and pulls out the big guns in Act 3.
If you’ve seen the original, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by the direction the remake takes. Though it can feel like a correction aimed at pleasing a wider audience, it also makes for a more satisfying film.
Fanciosi is carving out a career of wonderfully nuanced genre performances (Nightingale, Stopmotion). We learned in 2017 with Split that McAvoy can do anything. Anything at all. He proves that here with a ferocious turn, evoking vulnerability and contempt sometimes in the same moment. It’s a compelling beast he creates, and no wonder weary travelers fall under his spell.
Watkins doesn’t make enough movies. For his latest he’s chosen a project with the narrowest chance of success. But here’s hoping he finds it.
There’s a particular feeling that often accompanies grief. It’s the feeling of being unmoored, of somehow not really knowing who you are without the person you’ve lost. Writer/director Mary Dauterman details that feeling as well as the mixture of depression, numbness, confusion, and a desire to escape your own reality with her weirdly gross feature debut, Booger.
That’s the name of a cat. Izzy (Sofia Dobrushin) let the mangy stray in through the window one day, much to the dismay of best friend and roommate Anna (Grace Glowicki). It was filthy. Nasty. But Booger grew on Anna, and then, the same day Izzy dies in a bike accident, Anna realizes Booger is missing.
Her aimless quest to find her dead friend’s missing cat and her own slow transformation into a mangy, filthy, nasty beast give Anna the opportunity to avoid dealing with Izzy’s death.
Dauterman gets points for puncturing the nobility of grief and tapping into its necessary selfishness and cognitive dysfunction. Additional points for just being as gross as possible about it.
Glowicki’s awkward, strangely relatable performance helps Dauterman create a tone that’s simultaneously fantastical and banal. Anna’s own loosening grip on reality is balanced by a wonderfully honest turn from Marcia DeBonis (Sometimes I Think About Dying) as Izzy’s mom. Heather Matarazzo delivers a fine cameo in a role, like several in the film, that offset the unpleasantness with broad but dark humor.
The body horror elements are never done to terrify, but they may very well make you gag.
The dramedy doesn’t dig terribly deep, and Dauterman does not complicate the plot. We’re along for the ride as Anna lets her life crumble around her while she imagines she’s turning into a feral cat so she can avoid facing her friend’s death.
The character study pretty studiously avoids letting us get to know Anna’s character. She’s lost who she is and can’t seem to move on. Still, a committed, wryly comical turn from Glowicki and Dauterman’s insightful if unexpected direction ensure a memorable and strangely affecting film.
